ANY IDEA WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING????

Everyone has a theory, but no-one really ‘knows’ why it’s happening and everyone is tearing their hair out because of it and yet the decline continues, it’s looking like the Peter Walsh days all over again and quite frankly there is little doubt that, whatever the spin tells you, we’re in a deep crisis!!

I know that people at the Club and some players and their families read this, so it’s hard sometimes to be honest, but I have to be, because there is no point doing this stuff every week unless I write it as I feel it! Everyone is increasingly pointing the finger in one direction, with now, I believe, good cause and yet the main issue for me is restricted to just one thing; what’s happening to my Club on the field. For me, sitting there on the terraces and having to watch it all unfolding, with abject performances and people steaming out well before the end renders the whole experience bloody heartbreaking!!!!!

I’m starting to think that perhaps this Diary has run its course and on that one, who knows? I say that because once again this week’s offering is reduced to another succession of whinges, beefs and grumbles as despite a lot of head scratching and soul searching, I simply don’t know what else to write!

You’d think that, as a one club fanatic, if you go to a game with zero expectations, then you’ll not be disappointed when you lose! That’s at least the idea that I’d worked on it for weeks and at Sheffield at least, it worked. However for this supporter, despite that mind set, Friday’s performance was a new low, as a once vociferous fan who got involved, bayed at the referee, stood to cheer the breaks and sang and chanted with the best of ‘em, simply couldn’t be arsed to enter into it at all. I didn’t get mad and didn’t walk out, nor did I feel that awful gut wrenching disappointment I used to experience years ago, when the odd poor performance came along. For me personally I think the key to all that is in the last bit, because we no longer have to endure the ‘odd poor performance’ as they are now the norm. I couldn’t even get passionate about another poor refereeing show by Phaler because, ‘what the hell’, we all knew what the outcome would be from the first set of six didn’t we?

I’m told that during that simply horrid 80 minutes against Huddersfield the statement ‘Dear oh dear’ was all I repeated, time after time throughout what was just an absolute shambles from beginning to end.

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Well, we are in the next round and it was job done, but if I’m honest it was precious little more!!

A great turn out!

This is a near as you’ll get to a real time Diary, as we’re on our way home, Mrs R. has successfully navigated us out of Sheffield and I have the laptop out on my knee. You know, I’d worried about this game all week, I shouldn’t have I know, but this is Hull FC, so right now my first thoughts are ones of relief. We had a purple patch in the first half when we built a lead that was to prove unassailable, but all the creativity all the guile and all the enterprise came from what was a pretty average Sheffield team. However we saw a group of players that were not hidebound by a game plan that was tailored for ‘the let’s try and not lose’ mentality we see manifest in several Super League Clubs these days, including us. It strikes me that our whole approach appears to be built around not losing at all cost and as we huffed and puffed, it was, for long periods, effective with regard to getting that result, but also bloody frustrating and a bit painful to watch at times!!

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The 2015 back to back wins edition!
(Enjoy it; it might just be the last one!)

So Ok before we get to analytical about it all, the first question has to be, who would have taken two wins from the three Easter games? Rovers was a disaster and Saints a real freak of a result, while Widnes targeted us as ‘easy beats’, and pinned all their hopes of a second Easter win on our game. They even rested 6 or 7 players from their trip to Catalan to ensure they rolled us, but somehow we managed to scupper their best laid plans and we turned them over…quite easily in the end! Ha, Ha Suckers!!!

Friday wasn’t pretty and a lot of the time it certainly wasn’t smart, but we got home and over the line…for the second time in a week.

Although a lot is still wrong, after Friday night I was just relieved to have a tally of 4 points over the holidays and whether wins come as classy performances, or (as we have seen), desperate scrambling arm wrestles, it makes little difference. In the new Divisional format, pleasing the fans with attractive rugby is way down the agenda as sadly now only one thing matters and that’s points!!

However as thankful as we are for those two victories, Cup weekend approaches, in fact its Sheffield’s Cup Final and there can be no slip ups at all on Sunday. We should play a full team and not rest anyone although in reality we only have around 17 or 18 fit anyway. If there is a slip up, as well as the Coaches job being back in the melting pot as far as the fans are concerned, there is little doubt that for many of the Faithful, the season will be over, almost it seems, before it began. With Adam Pearson’s unwavering loyalty to our at times beleaguered leader, a win will, I’m sure, see our coach’s tenure secured. However should we lose, then as perhaps our only chance of any glory at all in our 150th season disappears over the horizon, I think it’s hard to see our coach’s tenure not being very far behind it!

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Let’s get this over with eh? I promised the next Diary after the Saints game on Monday, but quite frankly, I’m so depressed and fed up I just thought I’d give you my two penneth now in the vain hope that it helps get Friday out of all our systems!!

You know, as the weeks go by it’s getting harder and harder to write this rubbish, last Friday, the day after that torrid night at the KC, we were all shell shocked weren’t we? We all just wanting it to go away and no one wanted to talk about it, however as usual I have little choice and so I’ll do my best to at least try and make some sense of it all!

I know people were really hurting, because I experienced it first hand the next morning! I’ve made loads of friends (and a few enemies too) over the years of writing this stuff every week, but when, after a fitful night’s sleep I awoke on Friday Morning, I was amazed to be greeted with my phone cataloguing texts and E mails from people who were so disappointed, downhearted or plain fuming; they simply couldn’t sleep!

Many people had already by then got round to asking as to whether, come the end of this season, we are likely to be the latest team to discover that no Club is too big to be relegated? It’s a pretty unlikely possibility just 8 matches in, but as game after game goes by and we look more and more clueless, the prospect of that shocking demise evolves gradually in our minds, shifting from a fantasy to a possibility. It’s all just hypothetical at present of course, but the Derby certainly left me numb! I was also left realising what could actually happen, as with feelings of despair and disappointment most of the fans who absolutely love the Club, had to admit afterwards that they were all embarrassed by the performance of their own team!!
What a state of affairs eh?

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